General Introduction
This is the second in my series of ‘reaction articles’ to the recent lectures given on 27-28 May 2023, by Dr Bart Ehrman, on the topic of ‘Jesus & Paul: The Great Divide’ (you can read the very first article in this series by clicking here). In Dr Ehrman’s lectures, my overall view is that he successfully managed to contrast Jesus’s teachings and beliefs with those of Paul of Tarsus.
Although the first couple of lectures were difficult, because they involved Dr Ehrman’s personal speculation on who Jesus was and his mission, the subsequent lectures were much more enjoyable, because they brought up ideas and hypotheses which most Talmidis can agree with.
This article you are reading now will be about the third lecture, which was entitled, ‘Jesus the Moral Teacher’, but it will also include a few things from the controversial second lecture, ‘The Gospel of Jesus’. In that second lecture, Dr Ehrman speculated that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who taught that the present, natural world was soon coming to an end, and that the new world would be a perfect one free of war, death and suffering. Because these things never happened, Dr Ehrman concludes that Jesus was a failed prophet.
However, in my view as a Talmidi, I believe Yeshua was a tribulationist prophet, who taught a coming ‘Day of YHVH’, where God would intervene in human affairs as King and Judge. It would be a time of trial and tribulation, war and upheaval, but by returning to the just and righteous ways of God, most of the penitent and the good would survive.
The main difference between apocalypse and tribulation is that, while apocalypse is about the current world order ending, to be replaced by a perfect world, tribulation is about a time of upheaval and turmoil brought on by human beings abandoning God’s ideals and values, so causing a collapse of society and bringing on a time of war, which would lead to exile. In tribulationist theology, repentance – turning back to God’s ways and principles – would help people to survive the worst excesses of the tribulation, and even shorten the time of suffering (Mt 24:22). After the time of tribulation, a new age would begin where the Jewish people would follow God’s ways more closely, but it would still be an earthly world, not a supernaturally perfect one. Because all these things happened, to Talmidis, Yeshua was a successful prophet.
With the case of an apocalypse, one could also make the point that, why would a prophet encourage the Jewish people to improve themselves and how society functioned, if they firmly believed that the world was going to come to an end? Why go to all the trouble and effort of making something better, if it is all going to be done away with, and replaced with something better anyway?
With respect to how Yeshua’s warnings are portrayed in the gospels, it is entirely possible that the writers of the gospels were all apocalypticists, and consequently, they edited out or changed anything which made it clear that Yeshua was instead a tribulation prophet; it’s possible that they did this quite innocently, if they mistakenly thought that all references in Yeshua’s sayings to a tribulation were instead references to an apocalypse.
John the Baptist’s Mission according to Talmidi theology
Yeshua followed on immediately in the footsteps of the prophet Yochanan the Immerser (‘John the Baptist’). Scholars speculate that Yeshua was originally a disciple of Yochanan, and for this reason, to understand the mission of Yeshua in context, we have to look back at the prophetic mission of Yochanan.
Yeshua believed that Yochanan was a ‘prophet like Elijah’ (see Mt 11:14). Unfortunately, because of ancient Pharisaic theology, which taught that God would send a prophet like Elijah to announce the coming of the Davidic messiah, this is consequently the belief that mainstream Christian theology also took on board, because it suited Paullist messianic beliefs.
In modern rabbinic theology, both the ‘Day of Adonai‘ and the coming of the one like Elijah are things to look forward to, because contrary to the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud interprets them instead as signs of the coming of the messiah and of the messianic age. Both are therefore viewed as joyful signs, and as such to be celebrated – again, because that‘s what the Talmud says.
However, a careful reading of the books of the biblical prophets will paint a very different picture of what this ‘prophet like Elijah’ will do – the Bible makes no mention of Elijah announcing the messiah or the messianic age. In Malachi 3:23 (Jewish bibles, Mal 4:5 in Xtian bibles), the prophet Malachi explains that Elijah will precede ‘the great and terrible Day of YHVH’ (i.e. not the coming of the messiah). The ‘Day of YHVH’ is therefore not something to be looked forward to (Amos 5:18), as it is in the modern Rabbinic community, but will instead be a time of metaphorical darkness. It is a term used by many biblical prophets to describe a time of terrible trial and tribulation, but this period of war and upheaval would come to an eventual end – not in a supernaturally perfect world, but in a new historical period of time. Once people repented after the tribulation, and God’s values were restored to society, this new time-period would begin. This is one of the main differences between apocalyptic theology and tribulationist theology.
To understand Yochanan’s mission as the ‘prophet like Elijah’, it is worth reading Malachi 3:1-5 in full:
“See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before Me. Then suddenly YHVH whom you seek will come to God’s Temple; the messenger of the Covenant, whom you desire, will come, says YHVH of the heavenly battalions. But who can endure the day of his coming (i.e. the day when the prophet like Elijah comes)? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or fullers’ lye. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites, and refine them like gold and silver. Then YHVH will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to YHVH, as in days gone by, as in former years. So I will come near to you to judge you. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud labourers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive resident foreigners of justice, and do not reverence me in awe, says YHVH of the heavenly battalions.”
Yochanan’s message was, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is approaching!” (Mt 3:1-2). As I explained in my previous blog post, ‘kingdom’ (malkhūt) in this phrase should be rendered as ‘Kingship’, meaning that God would soon intervene in Israel’s affairs as King and Judge.
In the theology and message of the biblical prophets, the prophet like Elijah was not someone whose arrival would announce the coming of the messiah, but rather, one whose arrival would warn of the ‘Day of YHVH’ – a time of trial and tribulation. The hallmarks of ‘a prophet like Elijah’ were that he would be sent to reconcile families, purify the just and the unjust, and prepare priests for righteous service of God. Yochanan preached a fiery message; he immersed people who came to him from among the general populace as a sign of repentance; he also immersed priests and Levites who came to him, so fulfilling the signs of the prophet like Elijah.
The Talmidi view of Yeshua’s Mission
We believe that God called Yeshua bar Yosef as a prophet, to pick up where Yochanan the Immerser left off. Yeshua’s mission, as a ‘tribulation prophet’, can best be understood in the same way as the prophet Zephaniah understood tribulation:
“Seek YHVH, all you humble of the Land, you who fulfil God’s commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility – perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of YHVH’s anger.” (Zeph 2:3)
In modern Talmidi theology, Yeshua’s mission was:
1. to announce the coming ‘Kingship of God’ (a soon-to-arrive time of tribulation for the Jewish people, which occurred in the late 60s to early 70s of the 1st century)
2. this tribulation was coming because many people were ignoring the just values, righteous laws and principled teachings of God (the ways of God’s Kingdom), so causing a breakdown and fracturing of society
3. in order for the Jewish people to survive this time of tribulation, people needed to repent, and return to God’s ways and values.
4. By returning to the original ideals, principles and values of God’s Way (as Yeshua taught, ‘because the old wine is good enough’), we will set ourselves back on the right path, and be doing the will of our heavenly Father, and so enter the Kingdom of God.
5. The wicked and the unrepentant who died in the tribulation would come before God, and be judged for their sins, and for the suffering they had inflicted upon God’s people.
6. Many of the penitent and the good would be able to survive the worst of the tribulation; the righteous who died during the tribulation would be rewarded with eternal life in heaven.
Dr Ehrman’s Negative Interpretation of ‘Love Thy Neighbour’
I would say that Yeshua’s message can be boiled down to, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’. Even the Pharisees were able to agree that ‘this is the whole of the Torah and the Prophets’.
However, Dr Ehrman has a very peculiar take on God’s second most important commandment. He believes that the commandment to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ was never intended to require Jews to love non-Jews, because “the Law tells Jews to kill all pagans!” (his own words, topped off with his inimitable sardonic chuckle).
Well, no, it doesn’t tell us to kill all pagans.
Dr Ehrman is referring to the places in the Torah where God apparently tells the Israelites to kill all the Canaanites. These instructions do not refer to all the pagan peoples of the entire world; they only referred to Canaanites, and what’s more, it is obvious that they only refer to Canaanites. Dr Ehrman is therefore deliberately misrepresenting what Torah says, in order to misprove how even the good things in Torah really mean bad things.
I personally do not believe that God would have instructed Israel to commit genocide; I think this is a later literary motif, inserted by the final 6th century BCE editor of the Torah, in order to explain why there were no more Canaanites left. I suspect the original divine instructions would have been to avoid all contact with the Canaanite pagan religion, and anything culturally pagan (as Torah implies in its numerous restrictions on Israelite contact with pagan practices), in order to prevent their forms of worship and their pagan ethical values from influencing Yahwist Israelites.
We know that the Canaanites were not wiped out during pre-Exile times, because the archaeological evidence says so. Some scholars even think that the references in Torah to ‘resident foreigners’ (or ‘aliens’ in Christian translations), were actually alluding to Canaanites who lived amongst Israelites for many centuries, and were attracted to the God of Israel. If you ignore the instructions – inserted later – to kill all Canaanites, what’s left in Torah in fact shows a great deal of compassion towards the ‘foreigners’ who lived amongst Israelites in the Land.
The other point to make here, is that ‘neighbour’ (Hebrew rea‛) does not mean, ‘the person who lives next door’. It means, ‘the person who is standing next to you’, metaphorically meaning, ‘your fellow human beings’. Yeshua proved this in his parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37).
Dr Ehrman pointed out that Jesus taught, ‘Love your enemies’; in his earlier lecture, Dr Ehrman also said that Jesus was a messianic revolutionary. My question is, well, if Jesus was a messianic revolutionary, how do you reconcile that with the teaching to ‘love your enemies’? Dr Ehrman doesn’t address that dichotomy.
Dr Ehrman’s view of Jesus as a moral teacher
Dr Ehrman says that Jesus’s message was basically that the apocalypse was coming, so people needed to prepare. Jesus didn’t teach people to believe in his death and resurrection to be saved; Jesus taught that salvation came by doing the will of our Heavenly Father (Mt 7:21).
Dr Ehrman stated that previous prophets, like Jesus, had a message of social justice – that God wants us to live just lives. This was in the fields of social, economic and political justice.
Dr Ehrman quoted the similarity of Jesus’s social message to Amos chapters 1 & 2, and Isaiah 1:2-3, 1:11, 1:15-17, 1:23. The passages from Isaiah in particular, concentrate on ethics over ritual. Some laws are more important than others according to Jesus – ethical teachings are much more important than ritual teachings. If you go to bible study, go to church, sing and clap in church, quote the bible, Dr Ehrman asks, “Is that enough? Amos and Isaiah say that this is not enough.“
As a side note of my own, in Pharisaic and mainstream rabbinic theology, all God’s commandments are deemed equal; ritual laws are all considered of equal importance to ethical laws. However, if you read the books of the biblical prophets, you realise that that is not the case at all. If you follow all the ritual laws, but none of God’s ethical laws, then any ritual commandment you might follow is utterly worthless (the fact that you faithfully followed all the ritual commandments will not count towards any points in your favour at all).
Jesus’s attitude to ritual – the same as that of the biblical prophets (‘mercy not sacrifice’) – is shown in Mt 9:13; and for those who thought that Temple ritual was central to the efficacy of Judaism, Jesus predicted the fall of the Temple at Mk 13:2.
I also think it needs to be stated that, whenever the Hebrew Bible talks about rejecting God, this doesn’t refer to someone who becomes an atheist. Rejecting the Holy One means rejecting God’s ethical values, God’s moral principles, and God’s way of how to live and behave in a just and fair society. In my opinion, you can reject all belief in God, and still be following the ethics and values of YHVH!
Dr Ehrman made the important point that one of Jesus’s teachings was to defend those in society who have no one to defend them. I would agree wholeheartedly with this view.
Dr Ehrman also made the point of, “How do you show your love for God? By doing what God desires – by helping the poor, by not oppressing the poor or foreigners, and by not ill-treating or exploiting people“. Again, I would agree with all this – Yeshua taught that, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Master! Master!’ will enter into the kingdom of God; only those who carry out the will of my Father in heaven.” The will of our heavenly Father is living the way of life which is pleasing to God.
As a personal note, Jews have never believed that only Jews are pleasing to God. A non-Jew can also live a life pleasing to God – a way of living that is just, fair, compassionate, kind, helpful and not hateful. Someone can be a Hindu, an Animist, a Sikh or a Buddhist, and still live a life which is pleasing to God. Such individuals would be classified as ‘Righteous Gentiles’ (but not as Noachides, since they are still members of a non-Yahwist religion).
Dr Ehrman said, “How does one show one’s love for one’s neighbour?“ He went on to say, “by doing for one’s neighbour whatever they need“. So then one needs to ask, “who is in need?“ And the answer is in Jesus’s parable of the sheep and the goats – the people who come before God for judgment (Mt 25:32-46). The ones who received God’s Kingdom were those who fed the poor, clothed the naked, and cared for the sick. Those who were turned away from God’s Kingdom were those who wilfully neglected to do any of these things.
Dr Ehrman says that, “For Jesus, admittance into God’s Kingdom is not dependent on whether you believe in Jesus or not; it depends on how you have treated the least in society.“ Amein to that!
Extending the remit of Torah
Dr Ehrman also points out how Jesus seemed to extend the remit of Torah, in contrast to how Paul wanted to limit it or even abolish it. He quotes the instances where Jesus said several times, “You have heard it said that . . . . but I say to you . . . .” For example, extending the commandment not to commit murder to those who hated one another in their hearts; and the commandment not to commit adultery to those married people who lustfully pursued others in their hearts outside of their marriage.
My take on this set of Yeshua’s sayings, is that Yeshua was not trying to make one’s thoughts sinful; in my humble opinion, I think Yeshua was trying to encourage us to discipline our thoughts, so that thoughts never get a chance to get translated into harmful or disastrous actions.
The ancient Jewish-Christian work, ‘The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs’, concentrates a lot on this aspect of Yeshua’s teaching (its ethical teachings form the basis of ‘The Testament of Yudah Nasi’ in The Exhortations). Giving examples, it tries to encourage people to resist a lesser sin, in order to avoid our thoughts evolving into something worse: a mindset and personality which is able to easily contemplate committing a greater sin.
Yeshua’s Gospel in Talmidaism
Most people are aware that the Old English word ‘gospel’ (gód spel) means, ‘Good News’ (Mt 4:23), and literally translates the Greek term euangelion (which in turn would have translated the Jewish Aramaic word, bėsortā). According to Paul, the message of the gospel was, ‘Christ died and was resurrected so that you could be saved from your sins, and have eternal life’. However, this was not the message that Yeshua ever preached.
When the rich young magistrate asked Yeshua, ‘What must I do to have eternal life?’ Yeshua didn’t say, ‘Believe in my death and resurrection, and you will have eternal life.’ Instead, he said, ‘keep God’s Words: do not commit murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false testimony, honour your father and your mother, and love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Mk 10:17b-22, Mt 19:16-22, Lk 18:18-23)
In the parable of the sheep and the goats (Mt 25:32-46), those who are saved are not Christians who believed in ‘Christ’, and those who were rejected were not non-Christians who refused to believe in ‘Christ’.
Rather, the people who were accepted into God’s kingdom were saved by their selfless actions, and those who were not accepted into the Kingdom were those who refused to do anything to help others. Dr Ehrman asks the question, “Would Paul have accepted this teaching of Jesus? Probably not.“ I would agree with this assessment.
The Circumstances of Yeshua’s Mission, according to Talmidi theology
The situation Yeshua found himself in, was that God had made him aware that a terrible tribulation was coming very soon, and that he was being called as a prophet to urgently warn the Jewish people about what was shortly going to happen. In order to survive the coming tribulation, people needed to repent, and return to God’s ways.
There are people today who say that the tribulation Yeshua spoke of is still in the future. However, it is obvious that in his ministry, Yeshua acted with a sense of great urgency. Some people will counter this and say that, well, it was only because he knew he was going to die soon. But then he taught that same urgency to his apostles as well – he told them not to waste time arguing with people (Mt 7:6) along the way, but to hurry to the lost sheep of Israel.
Like the prophets before him, returning to God’s Way meant focussing on God’s ethical teachings, not the ritual commandments. Because the threat of tribulation was an immediate one facing the Jewish people, for this reason Yeshua’s mission was specifically to his fellow Jews. Yeshua explicitly instructed his apostles not to go anywhere among the Gentiles or Samaritans, only to the lost sheep of Israel (Mt 10:5-6).
The problems that were making things worse in the Holy Land
The Zealots are barely mentioned in the gospels, let alone the rest of the New Testament. If you read ‘The Jewish War’ by Josephus, his opinion is that the violent actions of the Zealots were a major contribution to the events that led to the Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 CE. I strongly suspect that Yeshua would have held a similar view .
I personally believe that Yeshua saw the actions of the Zealots as a danger to the uneasy peace in the Galilee and Judea – that if things got out of hand, the Romans would react with severe violence themselves against the Jewish people (it was already well-known that the Romans reacted with murderous punishment against those provinces which violently rebelled against Roman authority).
Another problem faced by Yeshua was the imposition of the Oral Law by the Pharisees, which caused more problems than it solved with its intransigence – in Yeshua’s view, it was like locking the door to God’s Kingdom, and then throwing away the key (Mt 23:13). When Yeshua criticised, ‘the Law’, someone knowledgeable in matters of Torah would realise that he was not criticising God’s Torah, but the human Oral Law of the Pharisees. Yeshua seemed to be of the opinion that the oral law was preventing people fulfilling the just and righteous ethical requirements of God’s Torah.
I should say here, that this stance should not lead us to hate our fellow Jews. Yeshua’s teaching was to love those who hate us, and we should apply this commandment of love to the Pharisees (and to their descendants, Rabbinic Jews) no less than anyone else.
Another problem was that the rich were not playing their part in society. They took out of society through charges, taxes and levies, but put nothing back. In the commandments of Torah, everyone was required to give 10% of their income and agricultural produce to the Temple. Out of this, one of the uses it was put to, was to help the poor when they were in need.
One final problem I’ll mention here, is people’s desire for miraculous signs to prove prophethood (Mt 12:38-39). Yeshua always refused to give a sign. Modern Evangelicals celebrate signs and miracles in their church services as proof of the ‘truth’ of their faith, but this is not the way Yeshua understood how things were to be done (Torah even warns against paying heed to signs and miracles as proofs – Dt 13:1-6). Traditionally, the proof of prophethood is that a prophet’s words came true within the general lifetime of their audience – an important point to take note of.
Religious Hypocrisy
This part of Yeshua’s message is completely ignored by modern religious fascists. Waving a bible in your hand is not proof that you revere the word of God; doing the will of God is proof that you revere God’s Message. I doubt whether most Christian Nationalists have ever even read the gospels, let alone the Hebrew Bible.
In Yeshua’s preaching, ‘hypocrisy’ was not necessarily ‘saying one thing and doing another’. A hypocrite is a phony, a ‘religious faker’ – someone who pretends that they are faithful and religious by making a big show of how religious they are – they go to church every Sunday, every other word they say is ‘Christ’, ‘Lord’ or ‘Jesus’, they wave a bible in their hands, they condemn everyone they don’t agree with, and they preach hatred towards everyone they consider to be against the image of what a follower of Jesus should be. However, in reality they exploit the poor, have no compassion towards the sick, or towards those in difficulty, and take extreme delight in creating outcasts. In Yeshua’s view, a person shows their faithfulness to God by the fruit they bear, and by what comes out of their heart, because ‘from the abundance of plenty in the heart, so the mouth speaks’. If the content of the heart is wickedness, then what comes out of the mouth is wickedness.
Yeshua’s ministry of forgiveness
Forgiveness was a major theme in Yeshua’s ministry. In Aramaic, the word for ‘sin’ and ‘debt’ are exactly the same (chovā). I’m certain that Yeshua made this connection in what he taught, even though there are many Christian Nationalists who think that Yeshua said nothing about ethics in the economy. It is wrong to tempt people into debt, just as equally as it is wrong to tempt people into sin.
The economy in those days was not run for the benefit of the nation’s citizens, or even for the benefit of the country itself; it was run solely for the benefit of the rich and powerful – money only ever went in one direction.
Consequently, because of the way that the economy was run in those days, many poor people ended up in heavy debt. They were so poor, that they even had to borrow money for the clothes they wore on their own backs. They were virtual debt-slaves – they owed money for the tools they used, the seed they sowed, the land they worked, and the stone shacks they lived in. What they earned each day was barely enough to buy food for their families, and most poor people owed so much money, that they couldn’t ever hope to pay it off in their lifetimes. Consequently debt was inherited – this was debt slavery at its worst, where nothing you have will ever truly be yours.
This is why debt-forgiveness was such a big deal in Yeshua’s teaching. To forgive debt was a huge act of compassion towards the poor. It freed them to be able to look after their families properly, and not have to worry each day about how they were going to feed their children. Forgiveness of debt is part of Torah (see Dt 15).
This philosophy carried over into forgiveness of sin. For people with a conscience, the most regrettable sins of one’s past can often weigh heavily on one’s soul. It can even reach a point where, like debt, one can never hope to be free of the burden of guilt. What was needed in human relationships, in order to return to a healthy way of functioning, was for the party that has been harmed to see it in their hearts to forgive the person who has hurt them, especially if that person shows true remorse for what they have done, and displays a genuine change in behaviour.
Then there are sins against God, and against God’s way of living a fulfilling life. In such a case, there is no human being one can turn to, in order to ask forgiveness. That forgiveness can only come from God. True forgiveness comes when the sinner genuinely repents. Whenever a sinner came to Yeshua and showed true repentance, and showed real signs that they were turning their life around, Yeshua didn’t say to them, ‘If you wait until I die, then you will be forgiven your sins’. No. He would say to the penitent, ‘Your sins have been forgiven’ (eg Lk 7:47). Plain and simple.
Sometimes, God forgives us our sins even before we repent. God, who is all-knowing, knows that sometimes a person needs the weight of guilt to be lifted from them first, so that they can then be free to repent. This is a similar situation to someone in heavy debt, who is unable to turn their life around until their debts are forgiven. Only then will they have the resources to rebuild their life and turn it around.
If someone was genuinely repentant, and asked for forgiveness, then we should forgive them (Mt 6:14, Mt 18:21-22). If someone was heavily in debt, and there was no way such an individual could ever pay back such a debt, then the compassionate and merciful thing to do would be to forgive the debt completely (Mt 18:23-35). In contrast, Paul’s solution (forgiveness of sin only through the death of Christ), was like saying, ‘I’ll only forgive you if I go murder my children first’.
Yeshua’s teaching on loving others
There are some religious people who are only able to show kindness to members of their own religion. When it comes to accepting others, and showing kindness to members of other religions (or even to people who don’t belong to any religion), this is somewhere they simply are unable to go.
The essence of the nature of YHVH our God, is unconditional and merciful love. When you know that God loves you, and wants the best for you – and what’s more, is willing to give you the best – then you yourself, out of grateful love for a gracious God, become more willing to follow the ways of God. Yeshua taught us to be like God, and try to show the same kind of love.
Yeshua taught that we should even love our enemies – that is, to have kind regard even for those who hate us. The Aramaic word for ‘enemy’ (sān‛ā) does not only refer to someone who is at war with you, or someone who is fighting you; it literally means, ‘one who hates’. So a work colleague, a neighbour, even a sibling who hates you, are all included in this.
In a saying such as this, loving someone does not mean being in love with that person. It means having kind regard for them, such that you will not do to them the harm that they ultimately wish to do to you. The cycle of hatred and violence has to stop, and this was a big issue in Yeshua’s day with the Zealots. The Romans would do something cruel to Jewish people, and the Zealots would go assassinate a Roman. As punishment, the Romans would round up and execute a number of Jews, and in return the Zealots would murder more Romans. At some point, the cycle of violence had to stop, because the Romans were quite capable of utterly decimating the Jewish people, just as they had done to other peoples elsewhere in the Empire who rose up against them (such as the Dacians of Sarmizegetusa).
To stop this vicious cycle, it was important not to try and get even – as Proverbs says, ‘Do not say, “I will do to him as he has done to me; I will pay the man back for what he has done.” (Prov 24:29). This is the true intent behind Yeshua’s saying on turning the other cheek. It doesn’t mean, ‘Turn a blind eye and ignore all wrongdoing, and so give evil people free rein in society to do their worst’; it means, ‘Don’t seek revenge, don’t seek to get even when you are wronged’.
As a sidenote, some people might defend the Zealots and compare them to the Maccabean freedom fighters. However, the Zealots were not like the Maccabees – they even fought amongst themselves, killed their fellow Jews, and shed human blood in the Temple. My opinion is that because the Jewish faith was in danger, it was right for the Maccabees to oppose the Syrians. However, in Yeshua’s day, the Romans were a political threat, not a religious threat. Opposing the Romans would actually have increased the threat to the Jewish people. I believe that Yeshua would have been of the opinion that God would deal with the Romans in God’s own way, and in God’s own time.
Yeshua’s Core Ethical Values
There are a number of other values which are also typical of Yeshua’s preaching – here are just some of them:
– Calling Yeshua ‘Master’ (or in Christian terms, proclaiming Jesus ‘Lord’) is useless, if you don’t take any notice of anything that Yeshua actually teaches (Mt 7:21-23)
– Against doing the bare minimum: There are some religious people who take scripture so literally, that they only do what is required of them, and no more. As a result, they gain no spiritual profit from what God has asked them to do (Mt 25:14-28) – they avoid the good that they should be doing, simply because it was not asked of them to do it.
– Do to others as you would have them do to you: When you treat someone badly, consider how you would feel if someone were treating you that very same way – if you oppress someone, judge someone, put someone down and treat them as an outcast, then ask yourself, ‘How would I feel, if I myself were treated like that?’ Therefore, treat other people as you would have them treat you (Mt 7:12). If you have gone through a bad experience yourself, should you not then have compassion on other people who are in the same predicament? (Mt 18:23-34)
– Be merciful: Because God is merciful towards everyone, and gives everyone a second chance, we should show mercy towards everyone, so that we can truly be called ‘children of the Most High’ (Lk 6:35-36)
– Be generous: if you are able, then give someone who is without whatever they need, without first judging whether they are deserving of the charity (Lk 14:7-14, 6:37-38)
– Do things for others without want of reward: When you help others, do it without the expectation that they will be in debt to you as a result, and so be obliged to help you later in return (Lk 14:7-14)
– Lend without thought of return: If someone is in dire need, then if you are able, give them what they need, without the expectation that you will one day get it back (Lk 6:34-35)
– Doing good purely for the glory of God: Do good things, even if it is only to heighten the good standing of God’s holy reputation (Mt 5:14-16). Your good deeds not only help you by building up treasure in heaven, they also reflect back on the reputation of God’s good Name
– The importance of the content of the heart: People’s actions and words show the true contents of their heart – the true nature of their soul (Mt 21:28-31).
– Inner cleanliness and holiness: Even if you are not able to fulfil religious customs and rituals perfectly, what matters is the intent of your heart (Mt 15:17-20). Inner holiness is more important than external holiness (Mt 23:26)
– The true nature of a tree is shown by the fruit it bears: A nasty, self-obsessed person who decides to go to church every week, who tithes their income and waves a bible in their hand, still remains a nasty person if they don’t change how they treat others (Lk 6:43-44)
– Don’t quibble over religious minutiae: The ethics, values, principles and ideals of one’s heart, which come from God, are far more important than the petty, picayune details of getting religious ritual correct (Mt 23:23-31).
– Don’t be selfish: A generous heart is a soul full of light, which spreads its light all around to others; and a selfish heart is a soul full of darkness, which can only spread its darkness all around (Mt 6:22-23)
– Don’t judge or condemn: If you are the type of religious person whose faith is only expressed by judging and condemning others, then God will ensure that the same judgment and condemnation will be returned right back into your own lap (Lk 6:37-38)
– Don’t use malicious speech: When you come before God for judgment, even the words you speak will be held against you – your words will either acquit you, or condemn you (Mt 12:36-37); the unkind words that come out of a person’s mouth are what defile that person (Mt 15:11)
– Be trustworthy and not dishonest: When someone places their trust in you, honour that trust, and don’t be deceitful or dishonest (Lk 16:10)
– Have humility of spirit: The Kingdom of God belongs to those who are humble in spirit (Mt 5:3); those who humble themselves like a child, will be great in the Kingdom of God (Mt 18:4); those who are humble will be exalted by God (Mt 23:12);
– The self-proud will receive their come-uppance: those who are full of their own self-importance will be humbled by God (Mt 23:12); those who vainly assume their own importance will soon find themselves being brought down (Lk 14:8-10);
– The first will be last, and the last will be first: those religious people who arrogantly assume that they will be first in God’s Kingdom, will find that their very arrogance and presumptive mindset will see them placed last; and those whom heartless religious people have cast out, put down and held in contempt, will be raised by God to be first in God’s Kingdom (Mt 19:30, Mt 20:16)
– The leader as servant: Religious leaders exist to serve their community, and political leaders exist to serve their people. Leaders should not lord their authority over their people or ride rough-shod over them (Mt 20:25-27)
– Work for Peace: Those who make peace, and create the conditions for peace, are the very children of God (Mt 5:9)
– Settle any disputes you might have before they get out of control: Reconcile with those you are in dispute with sooner rather than later, because the longer a dispute draws on, the worse the outcome (Mt 5:25-26); before you come before God to make an offering, settle any dispute you have first, and then make the offering (in modern terms, first settle your disputes and make peace, before presenting your deepest and most important prayers to God, Mt 5:23-24)
and I’m sure you can think of many more.
Now, Dr Ehrman insists that Jesus was a messianic revolutionary, whose aim was to overthrow the Romans and establish a messianic kingdom. But do these words above – these ideals – sound anything like the aggressive and belligerent words of a messianic revolutionary to you?
The Good News for the Poor
As a Torah-observant Jew, Yeshua regularly expressed God’s concern for the poor. In his day, the poor were heavily exploited, and worked for very little pay. Torah has laws which are designed to alleviate some of the burdens on the poor (e.g. forgiveness of debt, not charging interest on loans to the poor, being generous to the poor in need and not be stingy, allowing the poor to glean food from fields and orchards, not oppressing or exploiting the poor, not denying impartial justice to the poor, not subverting the civil rights of the poor, paying the poor their wages on time and not withholding them, and showing general kindness to the poor because, as Israelites, we know what it is like: ‘remember that you were once slaves in Egypt, and how you were treated there’).
Unfortunately, in Yeshua’s day, the rich were ignoring the Torah’s protections and responsibilities towards the poor, much the same as today; times haven’t changed. This is why Yeshua criticised the rich so often. When we help the poor, or give assistance to the poor, it should not be for any want of a reward or return (Lk 14:13-14). In his parables, Yeshua criticised those in charge for oppressing and ill-treating those they ruled over (Mt 24:48-51).
In addition, part of Yeshua’s message of ‘good news for the poor’, was that one day, when the kingdom of God was fulfilled, there would be a turnaround in the way the world currently worked – this is the main thrust of the Beatitudes. When the current order is swept away, and God’s values are restored to society, the hungry will be fed, the thirsty will be satisfied, the meek will inherit the Land, those denied justice will have their justice, and the persecuted will have the Kingdom of God. These were also the promises God gave us through the biblical prophets, as the kind of life that was available to the poor in any generation, and in any age, where the compassionate laws of God are being observed.
Yeshua’s Mission to Israel, and Israel’s Mission to the Nations
When non-Jews are told, ‘Yeshua’s personal mission was only to the Jewish people’, unfortunately what many people hear instead is, ‘Jesus’s message is not for non-Jews’. I have to stress here that they are not the same thing – that’s not what the first statement means.
Yeshua had a very specific mission given to him by God – to save the Jewish people from the coming tribulation, by calling them back to God’s ways. Yeshua was being asked by God to reiterate God’s original message to the people of Israel. The tribulation that was going to come upon the Jewish people in the Holy Land, was not one that was going to affect non-Jews in the rest of the world. This is the aspect of Yeshua’s mission that was not relevant to non-Jews.
However, the mission of Israel as a whole, is far wider than the limited mission of the prophet Yeshua. The Kingdom of God is for all humanity; the noble values and ethics of YHVH are for the whole of humanity; salvation is for the whole of humanity; and God’s eternal and universal Covenant is for the whole of humanity.
The modern Talmidi community has made outreach to non-Jews who do not wish to follow Torah, but still value the ethics of YHVH. We are good friends with these Noachides, who do not practice Torah, have no desire to become Jewish, and yet still admire the teachings of YHVH and indeed, of Yeshua. None of us has, or ever will, impose on non-Jews something that they don’t want. There has even been talk among the various ministries in our community, of encouraging non-Torah ethical monotheism among the nations of the world, so that different peoples can retain and value their own ancestral, cultural identities.
Paul was not the only person who could ever have answered the question, ‘Do you have to become Jewish, in order to follow the teachings of Jesus?’ Modern Talmidis have our own way of answering this question with a ‘No’, and it works. I am certain that, if Paul had never existed, there would still have come a time when ancient Jewish Followers of the Way would have arrived at this self-same solution ourselves – that no, you don’t have to be Jewish to follow the teachings of Yeshua; the proof is that there are pro-Talmidi Noachides today who exactly fit this description.
In a hypothetical, alternative history, such a community of Noachides may even have become its own religion in time – who knows? But what I can say, is that such a Noachide religion would not have built a society based on the premise that ‘the Jews killed our god, and should be treated as second-class citizens for it’ – which we were for most of Christian history.
Paul built a non-Torah religion that evolved and grew to hate and persecute Jews, and holding Torah in contempt contributed to that (if you teach people to hate Torah, they eventually grow to hate those who wish to follow Torah as well). What Talmidis are currently building, is a rapport and friendship with non-Torah Noachides, and it is based on a mutual respect for one another – there’s no ’Yes but, No but,’ going on back and forth between us. Although these Noachides do not follow Torah, they do not have any contempt for it either.
There is sadness and sorrow in my heart, when I think about what world history could have been like, if Paul had never existed – a world where Gentile religions have friendly relations with Judaism, where we all work together to avoid religious persecutions, where the Portuguese & Spanish Inquisitions never happened, where the Russian Pogroms never took place, and where the Holocaust never occurred. I am also sure that a religion based on Yeshua’s true teachings would have resulted in greater freedom for women, and in women’s social equality, much earlier in history than it did in our own timeline.
Was Paul an Apostle?
Can anyone say, hand on heart, that the sum of all the above is what Paul taught? Ever?
Paul proudly claims that he was an ‘apostle of Christ’ (1Cor 1:1). However, not many Christians know what an apostle actually is. The Hebrew word is shalíach, which literally means, ‘one who has been sent out’. The quintessential quality – the ‘job description’ – of what a shalíach is, is that they repeat the message of their master verbatim. They might give interpretations, but nevertheless, they repeat the exact message of the one who sent them. They do not add to the message, and they do not take away any part of the message. That is what an apostle is.
This was so that anyone could say that, if you heard the words of the apostle, then you were hearing the exact words of the one who sent the apostle. Even Yeshua himself taught, when speaking to his twelve apostles, “Whoever listens to you is listening to me” (Lk 10:16a). Can anyone honestly say that if they listen to Paul’s words, then they were hearing the exact message that the Prophet Yeshua himself taught?
The gospels confuse the terms ‘disciple’ ( = ‘follower’, which properly refers to anyone at all who follows a particular religious teacher), with ‘apostle’ ( = ‘emissary’, which should only refer to individuals whom a religious teacher selects, and sends out to disseminate his message and teachings). If the gospel writers had been Jewish themselves, they would not have confused these two terms. Luke uses the two words interchangeably, as if they meant the exact same thing. However, both Mark (Mk 6:30) and Matthew (Mt 10:2) – supposedly the most Jewish gospel – only calls them ‘apostles’ once; the rest of the time, they are referred to only as ‘the Twelve Disciples’ ( = the Twelve Followers, e.g. Mt 10:1).
Summary
For Yeshua, Torah was its ethics and values, its social ideals and principles. Torah projected God’s loving concern for the least of society. Yeshua’s teaching is focussed on the ethical concerns of the Jewish faith, as the means to living a life which is in harmony with God, with the world, and with one another. By returning to these ways, people would be able to stave off the worst effects of the tribulation. Yeshua never taught that God cannot forgive us our sins until he himself died. Yeshua’s teachings taught us a way of selfless goodness, of doing good things without want of reward, even simply for the glory of God, rather than doing good with the sole hope of converting someone to your religion – as is the case with a lot of religious people today.
Coming up next . . . .
The third article in this series, called, ‘What did Paul know about Jesus?’ can be found here. It is based two of Dr Ehrman‘s lectures: the fourth lecture, which was entitled, ‘Who was Jesus according to Paul?’ and the seventh lecture, ‘What did Paul know about Jesus?’